‘I don’t know where I am’
UWIC Gallery, Capitol Centre, Cardiff
2nd to 19th December 2008
Monday to Saturday 9-5
“I don’t know where I am. What I mean is that I’m not certain where my physical boundaries are because I believe all boundaries, whether belonging to animate or inanimate objects, are fuzzy and blurry; nothing has fixed or precise edges. The consequence is that things we normally consider to be located in a defined place are actually spread across space. So while I know roughly where I am in the world I can only know this with a limited degree of precision. This is especially so when it comes to specifying the location of my mind, which (to some extent) is present in this document you are reading and in the works on show in this gallery.”
• I am brain (Life-size model of a human brain in resin and metal, 2008)
I am a brain,
I can’t see,
I can’t smell,
I can’t hear,
I can’t touch,
I don’t know where I am.
• Portrait of itself (Oil on panel with mirror, 2008)
When I look in the mirror to paint myself I see the reverse of how others see me. When I see my self-portrait reflected in a mirror I see myself the same way round as others see me. When I look in the mirror, do I see me or a reflection of me? Are not the reflection I and the same? If so then I am doubled, in two places at once: where I stand as I paint and where I appear in the mirror.
• Drip paintings 1 and 2 (Oil on panels in gilt frames with infusion stands and diluted pigment in bags, 2008)
We tend to think of objects, like paintings, as inanimate and lifeless, perhaps even as dead. But is it so simple? If we think of other objects as separate from us, as something quite distinct, then we overlook how they form part of our own lived experience. Other things we experience are really an extension of our living selves. In hospitals, IV drips are often administered to sustain life on the edge of death, and here they remind us that as we experience the paintings they come into our life. They are both lifeless and life.
With thanks to SGD (UK) Ltd. for generously supplying IV bags and sets.
• Thirteen small paintings (Oil on panels, various sizes, 2008)
• Young woman painting her own reflection (Oil on panel with easel and cloth, 2008)
This work is based on a painting by Nicholas Renieri (1590-1667) of a young woman at a mirror, which is housed in the Museé des Beaux Arts in Lyon. It is a painting of vanity, and in order to be vain — to love ourselves — we must see ourselves as something in the world, that is, as an object to be looked upon. This is why the image of the mirror occurs so frequently as a symbol of self-love; the mirror turns her from just being a subject that looks out at the world into also being an object that can be looked upon.
• Portrait of a man painting his self-portrait (Oil on panel and easel, 2008)
This work is based on a portrait painted by Baciccio in 1665 of the sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Bernini was one of the key figures in the Baroque period of European art, and is perhaps best known for sculpting the Ecstasy of St Theresa in Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. He also made a famous sculpture of David, which is said to contain his own facial features.
• Suspicion (Oil on panel, 2008)
In the movie Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock, 1941) we see the world from the viewpoint of a wife who suspects her husband may be a cheat and a murderer. But when two police inspectors come to call, and add to her doubts about her husband’s behaviour, we momentarily see the world from another point of view. One of the inspectors is startled by the Picassoesque reproduction he sees on her wall, and we are supposed to share his confusion about a painting that epitomises the incomprehensible way in which modernist artists chose to depict reality.
• To be and knot to be (Oil on circular panel with rope, 2008)
In 1912 Picasso made a famous cubist collage, Still life with chair caning, that used a piece of rope as a frame. This painting is often cited as a significant moment in the development of modern art because of the inclusion of extraneous materials into the painted object. However, 18th and 19th century artists like J M W Turner had framed paintings in rope, and during this time it was quite common to frame nautical paintings using a piece of rope taken from a vessel depicted in the work.
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